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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Happy Tuesday everyone! Heather here. I hope you all survived the sales this past weekend and still have some money left over for food. With the holidays getting closer, having a December birthday, and a winter graduation, the question I keep hearing from family and friends is what do you want for Hanukkah/Birthday/graduation?

Uhh... I don't know. But I sure have been looking. So if you are stuck in a gift rut like me or happen to be a family member ... listen up. (In no particular order)

So there you have it, sort of my wish list for the upcoming holiday season. I still have (a little) bit of time to add to this, so how about you? What's a great item on your list? Leave a comment and let us know!

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Good morning all, Kara here I hope you have survived your Thanksgiving holiday with your friends and family! I a going to keep this short and sweet today, as today is not a goo day for me, I'm feeling pretty down and out. anywho, have you seen the beautiful kit out by Jennifer? So Thankful This is such a gorgeous kit, and I know all of you have something to be oh so very thankful for!

If you have the kit, or are looking to by it be sure to click on the above link, and then comment here and show us you amazing layouts!

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Hi Everyone! It's Jenn (jk703) again, lol! I am here today to bring you some tips about Journaling. Journaling is a very important aspect to our digital creations. It tell the story, the background, and personal feelings in your pages!

Do you journal a little, a lot, or none at all? I tend to let each layout determine what type of journaling I am going to include. At the very minimum, I include the date and try to make a note of the people in the photos. Do you get stuck, and wonder what to add? Journaling prompts are a great way to add to your layouts and get you started telling more on your pages.

So... to get you to journal on your pages, I thought I'd share some questions that you could answer and create pages for. These questions can be asked of people, or you could start an All About Me project and answer them yourself! Here ya go:

1. What is your favorite memory from your childhood?

2. Who was your best childhood friend? Where are they now?

3. Where did you grow up? Type of house? City/farm, etc?

4. What were your teen years like?

5. What sports did you play? or instrument?

6. What did you think you would be when you grew up?

7. What were your favorite things as a teenager? Movies, music, food, etc?

8. Did you go to college or straight to work? Why?

9. How did you meet your significant other?

10. What are your favorite colors and why?

11. What was your first car? What car do you have now, and why did you choose it?

12. Do you have any nicknames, and where did you get them?

13. What makes you happy? Sad? Cry? Angry?

14. What good choices and bad choices have you made?

15. What is your favorite time of the day? Why?

16. Where will you be in 10 years?

17. What do you like to do in your spare time? Hobbies? TV?

18. What do you most like about yourself? Dislike?

19. Do you have any quirky or hidden talents?

20. What are your favorite musical artists? How did they change throughout the years?

21. Can you cook? Why or Why not? Who taught you?

22. What is in your purse right now?

23. What is on your ipod? applications, photos, games, movies, books?

24. What is your favorite book? author?

25. What is your favorite Holiday?

I hope some of these questions will get you to create pages about you and those around you! We'd love to hear your questions/prompts that you use as well as those awesome layouts you create! Link us up!

I used a 4x6 base card for my card and also cut additional waved strip for the pocket/holder inside the card... just make sure you leave a bit of extra paper on each sides except the top part (as seen in the image).

Adhere the front panel on a piece of cardstock and use double-sided or glue on the waved paper strip's flaps (as seen in the image).

Adhere the waved paper strip inside the card as seen below (leave the top open)... and an element at the upper right corner for additional cuteness :)

Super easy, right? :)

Link us up if you make something like this using any of Jennifer Fox Designs' digital kits, we would love to see it! :)

Friday, November 26, 2010

Hi everyone Nikki here to bring you another Freebie Friday!! Sorry it is late but I have been busy spending time with family and SHOPPING!! Yes I am one of those crazies that goes out and shops at 1am!!!
This week I have a desktop freebie for you and I decided to use Jennifer's Warm Winter Wishes kit!!
I hope you like it!!

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Huh? You say.... lol... Well, I am talking about photos and how you take them! It is Jenn (jk703) here again with a tip for photography! Now, I am trying to learn as I go, so I need to practice my own tips as well! But, through my research, here is what I've found to be useful!

First, let me explain quickly what the Rule of Thirds is. It is the basic dividing of a photo into thirds...by rows or columns. Though, in my opinion, it is more of ninths, because there are nine quadrants!! LOL! A lot of times when cropping, you will see the grid, like in my picture below:

Those grid lines can change your picture so much! Right now, I've used the crop tool to crop the photo and place the sun in the center of the picture! Kinds of looks funny! The Rule of Thirds is a basic assumption that you should place the primary parts or focus on the grid intersections. I've cropped my photo, and added some red dots to show you how I aligned my photo!

I actually like the way it cropped. The boat is off to the side and my sunset with reflections looks nice to the left a bit! It provide a well balanced, but interesting photo! Many cameras have a grid function that you can add for your viewfinder (Dslr) or on the Point and Shoot models. Check your reference manuals! Here are some more examples from a trip we took to the Florida Keys! On some, you will have to imagine the quadrants, lol!

Now, remember - this is just a guideline... many times rules are meant to be broken! Here is an example. I loved how this picture turned out of my Dad and cousin... with the scenery. If I moved the photo based on quadrants, it didn't look right!

Share some of your photos... post a link! Have fun with your photos and be sure to come back for a visit soon!

Monday, November 22, 2010

Hello everyone! Tara here with a yummy recipe! I am always looking for a great recipe for a sweet treat to take to holiday get togethers. So this really isn't a MEAL in minutes but a TREAT in minutes. I got this recipe from my best friend. She got me addicted to these a few years ago and my waistline hasn't been the same since. SO GOOD! Seriously, people will be raving about it and it is the EASIEST thing ever to make. Are you ready????

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Welcome to this week's Sunday Spotlight! It is freezing cold where I am this week, and it made me think of one of Jennifer's winter kits, one of my favorite of hers! Warm Winter Wishes is a collab between Jennifer and Nikki Epperson, with gorgeous colors and that oh-so-cute snowman!

I found some great layouts in the Digichick gallery using this kit, so I thought I'd share some with you here!

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Hi Everyone! I hope you are having a great weekend! It's Jenn, jk703, here to share a bit more information about the tools we use in Photoshop! We are going to look at the Crop Tool and it's alter function: Slicing! So... Lets get started!

Croptastic Cropping!

So what does this do? Well, many times when you start a project, you will use the Crop Tool; this allows you to crop unwanted parts of a photo, paper or other item. The Slice tool is able to let you slice your project into parts, and upload each slice as a different image!

The Crop Tool is pretty straight forward. First, you click on your image in one of the corners, and hold down the left button on your mouse.
Drag the mouse in the direction you want to expand to, the general picture you want it to end up when cropped.
Un-click, and you will have a darkened selection, and then a brighter section. The darkened section is the part of your image that will be cropped off. The portion of the image inside the box is what you image will look like.
Move and fix the cropped image as you need, and click on the checkmark to commit to the new cropped selection. You can also press Enter to commit to the crop too!

Here is my son, hugging a pumpkin... and I am just cropping all the extra space! You can see the bounding box, and the squares inside that bounding box. Those squares or grid represent the Phots Grid, which allows you to play on the Rule of Thirds! (Check back here Tuesday for some information on that!!!).

Once I clicked on the checkmark, I have cropped my photo to the smaller, brighter selection.Some tips about The Crop Tool:

Press the letter "C" on your keyboard to jump to the Crop Tool at any time.

Hold down the Shift Key to constrain the proportions and making it a perfect square.

If you decide you don't want to crop an image after selecting an area with the crop tool, simply press Escape or the button (Since I don't know it's name, you get a picture of the button, lol!)

Spectacular Slice!

What the heck is a slice tool for?! Well.... to make it simple... you can have one project open, and slice it into sections, and save each section.

Bear with me... think pizza. Slice it and each is it's own piece, and put them all back together, and you have a circle. Now think projects or web usage... linking to different parts of the web. My example for the slice tool is a siggy! Forum siggies have gotten really popular lately, and I threw this one together to show off this tool! (Just a tip, create your siggie in the size allowed for your scrapping home, this way you won't have to re-size different pieces after creation!)

Here is a basic siggy, now I will show you how to add slices so I can direct people to my blog, or my gallery:

Now, if you click and choose the Slice Tool, you will make a square around your image. Similar to The Crop Tool, but there are no grids, and the box itself, is made up of dots. Once you have your square, the software will set up what slices there are. This can be changed.

Here, you can see (I tried to zoom a little) that my bottom slice is covering both My Blog and My Gallery. I can right click on this slice, and choose Divide Slice, and then make it into two separate slices.

There are options when creating your slices... Re-naming them, providing a url, Message, and more. Here is a picture of the options menu within a slice, before I added my url's.

OK! Once you have all your slices and you are done cutting it all up into pieces,adding your information, you will Save for Web. So, click Save for Web, and make sure you use the following options:

Make sure your options are the same as mine. They are: JPEG; Maximum; Optimized Checked; Quality 100; Blur:0; Matte:Blank.

For this way of linking, you can save images only, BUT if you are linking and doing the whole code and table thing, remember to Save with HTML and Images.

If you don't follow the above choices, I don't know if the rest will work, sorry! This is what your slices will look like when you save them... I have a bunch of extra ones, but I just delete the ones that I don't have any image or url in.

Now, I upload to Photobucket, and then add the images to my forum signature area, and then link the 2 images. One links to my blog, and one links to my gallery. Quick and easy sliced signatures linked to the web! I hope this was something new, and if you do it another way, please share!!!!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Yep, that's right! Jennifer has a gorgeous new kit out today, and you have to check it out. Don't forget, it's on sale today ONLY 20% off! Head on over to Jennifer's Store and grab this up. And after you scrap with it, come back here and link us up, we love to see what you do with Jen's stuff!

And check out some CT Inspiration.

Finally, we loved reading your comments yesterday in the Win It Wednesday post. We used Random.org and got two winners:

Kat and Alyna, that's you!!! PM Jennifer over at The Digichick and for your free kit! Congrats!!!

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Sarah here with a hybrid project to share with everyone. Jennifer has a gorgeous new kit coming out tomorrow in her store, called So Thankful. When I saw the wordstrips that are included with the kit I knew I wanted to create a thankful book to show some of the things and people that I appreciate most in life.

The project was made using 4" chipboard coasters. I created an 8.5"x11" canvas and then clipped my paper to squares slightly larger than the coasters, added a photo and wordstrip. I was able to get 2 pages per sheet of presentation paper (I use HP matte presentation paper for almost all of my hybrid projects). Using my crop-a-dial I punched holes and then tied the pages together with twill and I think I ended up with an adorable little album.

Here's the finished project.

To get this gorgeous kit make sure to check out Jennifer's store at the Digichick tomorrow (Thursday Nov. 18). I hope this inspires you to make a thankful album. Mini albums are one of my favorite (and easy) hybrid projects to make.

Good Morning everyone! Jennifer has a brand new kit coming this week, you don't want to miss this one!

Wouldn't you love to win this kit before it even hits the store? Just leave a comment here about what you're feeling thankful for today. We'll pick a lucky winner (or 2...or 3!) before midnight EST, so hurry!

If you'd like an extra chance (or chances!) to win, do one or more of the following. Leave each entry in a separate comment for more chances!

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Hey all! Kat here with a lil tidbit Tuesday for ya.... I don't know about you but there are two things in the world that I enjoy a lot... food and scrapbooking. So I guess you can assume how excited I was when I found out that BOBBY FLAY and PIONEER WOMAN are having a Throwdown!!!! eeeeekkkk!!!! Come Wednesday night, I will be watching two of my favorites whip up an entire Thanksgiving meal. I can't wait to see who wins! If you want more details, check out the site here: Throwdown with Bobby Flay

On that note, I will leave you for the time being. I hope you all have a great week and a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Monday, November 15, 2010

I just got a new cookbook today. Pampered Chef's 29 Minutes to Dinner Volume 2. It looks awesome! I haven't had a chance to make anything yet, but the first thing I'm going to make from it, I predict will be a family fave. My son's favorite food, along with PB&J, is macaroni & cheese.

This is a healthy version of mac & cheese and I'm hoping to trick my family! Oh, and it only takes 19 minutes to make!

1. Cook pasta.For pasta, bring salted water to a boil in covered pan. Cook pasta according to package directions. Carefully remove 1/4 cup of the cooking water for later use. Drain pasta; return to pan and set aside.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Happy Sunday all, Kara once again with today's Spotlight Sunday. Last night I was browsing through Jennifer's gallery at The Digichick. I just have to say there are so many awesome layouts popping up there! Today I thought I would show you some of the LO's that popped out at me. Here ya go!

SAHM by LeeAndra I am a fool for journaling, and I myself am a SAHM, so this one I just love!

Me by Mommylaroo- I love the composition of this bight and amazing LO.

Pick of the patch by Taracotta7- What can I say about this one? LOVE the clustering and the title work rocks!

Your Name by Kat- I adore this photo of Kat's son, the use of the papers, and of course the journaling!

Okay, there you have it, today's Spotlight Sunday, wanna show me your LO's using Jennifer Fox's products? Then comment below and post the links to where I can find them. Until next time, have a great Sunday!

Matilda Jane

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Disclaimer

As a creative team member for several digital scrapbook designers, I have received their products for free in return for creating and posting projects (digital layouts, hybrids projects, etc). Many of the layouts you see here were done in conjunction with requirements for these creative teams. Please be advised that the products used were indeed received for free.